What Would You Do With Wireless?

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What Would You Do With Wireless?

By Mark Evans | December 7, 2007

If you really want to be honest about the wireless market, there hasn’t been much activity beyond voice, e-mail and text-messaging.

Sure, you can do lots of other things such as surf the Web but wireless has come no where near to matching its potential. For example, a recent Yankee Group study showed that only 13% of cellphone users in North America user their devices to surf the Web more than once a month while 70% of computer users go online every day.

“The user experience has been a disaster,” Tony Davis, managing partner with Toronto-based Brightspark, told the New York Times.
A lot of it has to do with the performance of wireless networks, which haven’t been fast enough, although that could change soon with the emergence of 4G and Wi-Max.

Nortel, which is enthusiastically pounding the Wi-Max table, did a survey to discover what consumers really want from wireless. Surprise, surprise, they found consumers want to do more with their wireless devices if only the technology would let them.

The three key findings are:

- While consumers do a lotwith their mobile devices beyond voice and simple text, they probably do a lot more (e.g. watch video and stream music) if they had access to faster wireless networks

- Young people want wireless social networking because these sites are how they stay connected with their friends. They want to be notified when friends are nearby, and be able to access services such as music and messaging.

- Users want Hyperconnectivity. They want everything that can be connected, to be connected for seamless access in devices, like cars, MP3 players and cameras, and they are willing to pay for it. [Editor's note: They want to pay for it? Really!]

For more of Nortel’s thoughts on wireless, check out CTO John Roese’s blog where he has a guest post by carrier networks VP Scott Wickware.

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